Belarusian Alphabet

There are 32 letters in the Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet ^[1]. This includes 6 vowels (а, е, і, о, у, ы), 21 consonants, 3 iotated vowels (ё, ю, я), and the soft sign (ь).

The Belarusian alphabet has several unique features that distinguish it from Russian: ^[1]

• Letter І (i): Belarusian uses і instead of Russian и for the /i/ sound
• Letter Ў (ŭ): A unique letter representing a short u or w sound (/w/) that doesn't exist in Russian
• Letter Г: Represents /ɦ/ (like English h in "behind") instead of Russian /g/ sound
• No letter Ё: While Belarusian technically has ё, it's rarely used compared to Russian

Belarusian is primarily spoken in Belarus, where it is an official language alongside Russian ^[2]. It has approximately 7.9 million native speakers. Significant Belarusian-speaking communities also exist in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania. The language belongs to the East Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family ^[3].

The difficulty of learning Belarusian depends on your native language. For speakers of other Slavic languages (especially Russian, Ukrainian, or Polish), Belarusian is relatively easy due to shared vocabulary and grammatical structures. For English speakers, the main challenges include:

• Learning the Cyrillic alphabet (32 letters)
• Mastering the palatalization system (soft and hard consonants)
• Understanding grammatical cases (6 cases for nouns)
• Learning verb aspects (perfective vs. imperfective)

However, Belarusian pronunciation is relatively phonetic, meaning words are generally pronounced as they are spelled, which makes it easier to read and speak once you learn the alphabet.

Belarusian is the official language of Belarus alongside Russian ^[2]. While Russian is more widely used in urban areas and government institutions, there has been a resurgence of interest in Belarusian language and culture in recent years, particularly among younger generations. The language is taught in schools, used in media, literature, and cultural events, and actively preserved through various language promotion initiatives.

To type the unique Belarusian letters і (i) and ў (ŭ), you have several options:

• Belarusian keyboard layout: Install the Belarusian keyboard layout on your device (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android). On this layout, і and ў have dedicated keys.
• Character map / Symbol insertion: Use your operating system's character map or insert symbol function to find and insert these letters.
• Alt codes (Windows): Hold Alt and type the numeric code on the number pad: Alt+0179 for і, Alt+0253 for ў
• Copy and paste: Copy the letters from a website or document and paste them where needed: і І ў Ў